March 2010

The DVD burner on Boon has been producing discs with errors on them. I’ve got lots of photos to transfer off the computer, but don’t trust Boon’s burner. Here’s how to get the photos on a DVD burned from another computer, in this case Mothball.

Create a directory to-dvd separate from where the photos are stored.

Move directories from the Photos directory to to-dvd. Keep adding until the size is almost 4.4 GB. Use du -hs to-dvd to check the size.

Select a photo for the DVD cover. Convert it to EPS with this ImageMagick command: convert img_1234.jpg cover.eps. Note the photo will be scaled to an aspect ratio of 1:1, so you might want to crop it first.

Make a list of the contents of of the disc. It’s a text file called items.txt with each line looking like this:

Of course, if you don’t have an ailing DVD burner, you can just burn the disc from k3b and be done with it. In that case, don’t check “only create image” before you burn the disc and you’re done.

On Mothball:

Start k3b

Choose “Tools/Burn DVD ISO Image…” from the menu

Choose your ISO file

Under settings, you might want to enable “verify written data”

Or you can burn the ISO from the command line: growisofs -Z /dev/dvdrw=photos.iso
Remember to make a few copies and give them to the people in your photos and your family. The best back-up solution is one that stores your data in geographically disparate locations.